Monday, June 4, 2012

Meet Pam Geisel

Pam Geisel was born and raised in Ohio and took shop class in junior high so she wouldn’t have to learn how to cook or how to sew. Since then she has taken a few quilting classes but is primarily self-taught. She’s always considered herself an artist and has explored using many different mediums, but it’s designing with fabric that really grabs her passion, much to the surprise of her junior high self.

Her education and work experience was as a graphic designer and also as an instructor of both graphic design and desktop publishing. Her quilts often have a strong graphic quality to them, even if the sewing technique is sometimes non-traditional. She creates and sells original, handmade art quilts and quilt-related art both on-line and at art shows in southwest Ohio. She enjoys making both traditional quilts and art quilts and also makes custom quilts.

What interests her about traditional quilting is how a quilt square can look completely different if the shapes that make up the square are in different colors or tones of the fabric. She is also fascinated by the secondary patterns that emerge when quilt blocks are arranged together.

Lately she’s been doing more exploration with non-traditional fabrics and making art quilts that incorporated traditional piecing but in new ways. She’s often discovering new techniques and incorporating more than just fabric into her art.

Pam is inspired by everything around her: patterns in the trees and the leaves, designs in a tile floor, the shape of a wave. Sometimes she get an idea like a flash and other times the fabrics tell her what they want to be.

She has exhibited her art with the Ohio Designer Craftsmen’s “Best of” shows, OH+5, the Springfield Museum of Art member’s shows, and a special exhibit in the Experiencenter at the Dayton Art Institute.